HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The area called "Tragata", is located on the land of the town of Sopot and is about a kilometer south of the present town.

To the north of "Tragata" passed the old Roman road coming from the road station "Subradice", (from the Latin -"subradice", ", i. e. sub-mountain station or station located at the foot of the mountain). The road passes near the present village of Hristo Danovo (Tekija), crosses Stryama River in the area between the villages Dabene and Voynyagovo in the direction of Plovdiv, turns to the east to "Strazhata" at Kalofer and Augusta Traiana (today Stara Zagora).

This road, known to the locals as "the little road", was used even until the beginning of XX century and in that historical period was a major thoroughfare of the Stryamska valley.

On the south it borders the area "the little road", encompassing the area "Tragata", which in turn shows the antiquity of the town compared to the surrounding settlements.

On the south it borders the area "Gyolovete", which partly belonged to the land of Sopot. At the point where "Tragata", is located, met the boundaries of the land of Sopot, the present village of Karavelovo and the vanished in 1688 Bulgarian Catholic village of Paulician, named in Ottoman sources as Tariki Paulician. The place where these three territories gathered was marked by an erect upright of stone and under its base were buried coals and soot to show the place, even if the stone would be removed or moved. All this was destroyed in the 60s of XX century, when the land was pooled into collective farms, the headlands were plowed up, and only the names of the places remained to remind of the past.

In the Bulgarian language, "Tragata" is now an obsolete word, retained only in some dialects and means "sign", "mark", "track".

It has been preserved with the same meaning in the Western Bulgarian lands - in what is now Macedonia. For example: "Nashli go po tragata" - "They found him on the track". In the Serbian language "Natrag Bracha", means literally "Go back, brothers". The Greek word "sinur"- for headland, meaning "property boundary", is synonymous with the old Bulgarian word "traga", but here we have used the Bulgarian word in the sense of "property boundary", instead of the later established Grecism "sinur". It is noteworthy that the proto-Bulgarian word "mark", is not used, although it is one of the few remaining and proven ones, while the old Slavic word "tragata", was established, which suggests the ancient character of this denomination in relation to the time of the Early Middle Ages, i. e. after the fifth and sixth centuries AD - the time when the Slavs populated and settled down in these places.